Bosch sat on the bed with his bad leg up. He had a bag of ice on his knee and it seemed to ease the discomfort the second dose of Advil hadn’t yet reached. He was in his room at the Pier House and studying the tourist map of Old Town that he had received from the front desk clerk when he checked in. Clearly marked on it were the sunset viewing spots and the wharves where the cruise ships docked. He planned to check these out in his needle-in-a-haystack search for Finbar McShane.
His room had a small balcony and a view of the turquoise water. His eyes were drawn to it because he was so used to the coldly forbidding blue-black water of the Pacific. He now saw a large catamaran cruising slowly by, seemingly every inch of deck space occupied by a passenger. Painted along the side of the hull was a phone number for reserving a spot on a sunset cruise.
Before coming to his room, he had used a resort map, also given to him at check-in, to locate the Chart Room, and learned it did not open until five. He planned to be there then, with the hope of talking to the bartender before the place got crowded.
He had an hour to wait, so he decided to use the time walking through Old Town and showing around the BOLO flyer with the many possible faces of Finbar McShane on it. He got up and put the bag of ice in the bathroom sink. The ice and the painkiller had combined to make the knee feel usable—for a while.
He left the room and the hotel and started making his way up Duval Street, stopping at Sloppy Joe’s and other bars and asking bartenders if they recognized the man in the photos.
He got no takers. But he did get the idea that most of the bartenders and waitresses he showed the flyer to had fled from something themselves before landing in Key West. A bad life, a bad relationship, a bad crime—it didn’t matter, but it made people hesitant to finger a fellow traveler on the runaway trail. Bosch didn’t mention to any of those he spoke to that the man on the flyer was the only suspect in the killing of a whole family. He didn’t want to upset their romanticized version of running away from the past.
He got back to the Pier House by five and went directly to the Chart Room, which was tucked into a first-floor hallway in the main wing of the hotel. A man with gray hair pulled back into a ponytail was unlocking the door when he got there.
He entered and Bosch followed him in. The bar was small, about the size of a hotel room, because that was clearly what it had once been. There was a six-stool bar on the left side and there were a few small tables and sitting spots on the right. It looked to Bosch like the place would be over capacity with just twenty people.
Bosch took the first stool and waited for the man with the ponytail to come around behind the bar. It was all dark wood, with lights under the three tiers of liquor bottles, creating an amber glow. There were many photos pinned on the walls, almost all of them yellowed by time. There were no windows with a view of the water. This was a place for worshipping alcohol, not the setting sun.
“That looks like it hurts,” the bartender said.
He pointed at Bosch’s ear.
“It’s not bad,” Bosch said.
“Fishhook?” the bartender asked.
“I wish.”
“Bullet, then.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know fishhooks from Key West. Bullets from Vietnam.”
“Right. Who were you with over there?”
“Marines One-Nine.”
“The walking dead.”
Bosch knew about the walking dead. The First Battalion, 9 Marines took more casualties than any other unit during the war, hence the name they came to be known by.
“What about you?” the bartender asked.
“Army,” Bosch said. “First Infantry, engineer battalion.”
“The tunnels.”
“Yeah.”
The bartender nodded. He knew about the tunnels.
“You in the hotel?” he asked.
“Room two-oh-two,” Bosch said.
“Don’t look much like a tourist.”
“I guess I gotta get some shorts and sandals and maybe a Hawaiian shirt.”
“That’ll help.”
“Are you Tommy?”
The bartender stopped his busy work behind the bar getting ready for the night and looked directly at Bosch.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“No, first time in Key West,” Bosch said. “Over at the police station, I was told that you were the man I needed to talk to.”
“About what?”
“The bar trade in Key West. I’m trying to locate a bar that closed down six, maybe seven years ago.”
“What was it called?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t have a name.”
“Seems kind of fuzzy. You a cop?”
“Used to be. Now I’m just trying to find a guy who came here from L.A., invested in a bar, and then lost it all. My name’s Harry, by the way.”
He offered his hand across the bar top. Tommy wiped his hand on a bar towel and shook it.
“How long you been here, Tommy?” Bosch asked.
“Put it this way: longer than anybody else,” Tommy said. “This guy you’re looking for—he’s got a name, right?”
“He does, but I don’t think he’s using it here. Finbar McShane. He’s Irish.”
Bosch studied his eyes to see if there was any flare of recognition. There was.
“The Irish Galleon,” Tommy said.
“What’s that?” Bosch asked.
“That’s the bar. Two Irish guys opened it about eight years ago. Well, one guy did and then the other guy came over and they were partners. Like we needed another Irish pub in Key West. Fixed it up outside so it looked like a Spanish galleon, you know? The place lasted a couple years and then it got shuttered. They lost their asses, left a shitload of creditors that never got paid.”
Bosch knew there would be records of ownership with state and local agencies monitoring alcohol licensing, maybe a bankruptcy filing as well. Getting the name of the bar was a good lead.
“Did you know them—the partners?” he asked.
“No, they were outsiders, not locals,” Tommy said.
“What about their names?”
“Nah, not sure I ever knew the names of those guys.”
“Who would?”
“That’s a good question. Let me think. You going to drink or just ask questions?”
“Bourbon.”
“I’ve got Michter’s, Colonel Taylor, and a little bit of Blanton’s left.”
“Blanton’s, neat.”
“That’s good, because I’m still waiting on my ice.”
Tommy used the hand towel to polish a rock glass and then poured a generous shot of Blanton’s. He put the glass down in front of Bosch. It looked like there was enough left in the round bottle for one more shot.
“Slainte,” he said.
“Cheers,” Bosch said.
A man entered the bar, carrying a large stainless-steel bucket full of ice. He hoisted it over the bar and Tommy took it and poured it into a bin. He handed the bucket back.
“Thanks, Rico.”
Tommy looked at Bosch and pointed to the ice bin.
“I’m good,” Bosch said.
Tommy held up a finger like he wanted to pause everything while he considered a new idea.
“I think I know somebody,” he said. “You’re going to take care of me for this, right?”
“I am,” Bosch said.
He watched as Tommy pulled a corded phone out from under the counter, dialed a number, and waited. Bosch then heard Tommy’s side of a brief conversation.
“Hey, remember the Irish Galleon? What happened with those two guys?”
Bosch wanted to take the phone and ask the questions, but he knew that was probably a quick way to end the call and Tommy’s cooperation.
“Oh, right, yeah, I think I heard something about that,” Tommy said. “What were their names?”
Bosch nodded. It was turning out he didn’t need to coach Tommy.
“And where did Davy go?” Tommy asked.
The call ended a few seconds later, and Tommy looked at Bosch but didn’t report what he had just heard. Bosch got the message and reached into his pocket. He had hit an ATM for four hundred dollars at the airport before takeoff the day before. The money had come in denominations of fifties and twenties. He now peeled four fifties off the fold of cash and put them down on the bar.
“The original owner was Dan Cassidy,” Tommy said. “But he left the island after they closed the bar down.”
“Where did he go?” Bosch asked.
“My guy didn’t know. His friend from Ireland that he took on as a partner was Davy Byrne, but everybody thought that was bullshit.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was an alias, clear as day. Davy Byrne’s was the name of a pub in Ulysses, the Joyce novel about Dublin. Supposedly it’s a real place over there, still in business after a hundred years. So people around here thought he was like an IRA guy or something who came here and changed his name because he was too hot to handle back there.”
Bosch didn’t say that the Troubles were largely in Northern Ireland, not Dublin.
“Did your guy say whether he ever met him?” he asked instead. “Think he could pick him out in a photo?”
“He didn’t say but I doubt he ever did meet him,” Tommy said. “He’s got the Bud distributorship for all of Monroe County. So he knows what’s going on in every bar in the Keys, but he hasn’t driven a delivery route himself in years. He did say these guys stiffed him for a couple grand’s worth of beer when they shut it down.”
“You have a cell phone?”
“Sure.”
“Can you take a photo of this and shoot it to your friend anyway? You never know.”
Bosch unfolded the BOLO flyer on the bar top. Tommy looked at it for a long moment. Then he slid it down the bar until it was directly under one of the pendant lights, took a cell phone out of a pocket, and took a photo of the flyer. He handed the flyer back to Bosch.
“Los Angeles Police Department,” he said. “I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”
“I’m not,” Bosch said. “That’s old. From a case I had when I was still carrying the badge.”
“He’s like the one that got away or something? The white whale, ‘Call me Ishmael,’ and all of that?”
“Moby-Dick, right?”
“Yep. First line of the book.”
Bosch nodded. He had never read the book but he knew who wrote it and that Moby Dick was the original white whale. Between the references to Joyce and Melville, he got the idea that he might be talking to the most well-read bartender in Key West. Tommy seemed to know that was what he was thinking.
“When it’s slow in here, I read,” he said. “So, what did he do? Your white whale.”
“He killed a family of four,” Bosch said.
“Shit.”
“With a nail gun. The girl was nine and the boy thirteen. Then he buried them in a hole in the desert.”
“Oh, man.”
Tommy put his hand down on the fifties and slid them back across the bar top toward Bosch.
“I can’t take your money. Not for something like that.”
“You’re helping me here.”
“I’m sure no one’s paying you to chase this guy down.”
Bosch nodded. He understood. He then asked the most important question.
“Did your friend the beer distributor say whether Davy Byrne is still on the island?”
“He said, last he heard, Davy was working on the old charter docks. But that was a few years back when he heard that.”
“Where are the old charter docks?”
“Right below the Palm Avenue Causeway. You got a car?”
“I do.”
Tommy pointed toward the back of the bar.
“Easiest way is to take Front Street out of Old Town and get on Eaton,” he said. “Eaton becomes Palm Avenue. You go over the bridge and there’s the marina. You can’t miss it.”
“How many boats are we talking about out there?” Bosch asked.
“There’s a lot. My buddy didn’t know which boat this guy was supposedly working.”
“Okay.”
“And if I were you, I’d go now. This part of town is going to start filling up for sunset. Traffic will be a bitch and you’ll never get out of here.”
Bosch lifted his glass and took the first and last sip from it. The bourbon was sweet on his tongue but fire in his throat. He realized he probably should have ordered something that would have gone down easier, like a port or a cabernet.
“Thanks for your help, Tommy,” he said. “Semper fi.”
“Semper fi,” Tommy said, apparently accepting the Marine salutation from a non-Marine. “Those tunnels, man…What a fucked-up place.”
Bosch nodded.
“What a fucked-up world,” he said.
“It’s an angry world,” Tommy said. “People do things you’d never expect.”
Bosch took two of the fifties off the bar top and put them in his pocket. He slid the other two back toward Tommy.
“Finish off the Blanton’s for me,” he said.
“Glad to,” Tommy said.
On his way out, Bosch held the door for a couple in shorts, sandals, and Hawaiian shirts on their way in.